


Odontophilia

by Crystalwren



Series: Paraphilias and Other Compulsions [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: BBC Sherlock - Freeform, Challenge Response, Community: sherlockbbc_fic, Fetish, Kink Meme, M/M, Paraphilias, Teeth, odontophilia, tooth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-14
Updated: 2012-04-14
Packaged: 2017-11-03 15:24:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crystalwren/pseuds/Crystalwren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has an odd sexual fetish. John doesn't share it but he's willing to accommodate it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Odontophilia

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the LJ Sherlock BBC Kink Meme, prompt post 28. "Sherlock likes to run his finger along John's gums and teeth" suggested by anon. My original reply was posted as anon, but then I remembered that I've written stranger stuff than this.
> 
> Thread can be found here:
> 
> http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/18842.html?thread=111061146#t111061146

** Odontophilia **

 

A tooth is a calcified structure found in the mouths of many vertebrates. It is composed of four main layers: the enamel, the dentin, the cementum and the pulp. Like most mammals, humans are diphyodont, meaning that they develop just two sets of teeth over their lifetime. The first set is often called baby or milk teeth, although the proper term is deciduous. The second set is referred to as the adult or the permanent teeth. There are thirty two permanent teeth in the human mouth, including the last four molars, commonly called the wisdom teeth as they erupt between the ages of seventeen to twenty one years. In many cases, wisdom teeth will require medical intervention as they are essentially vestigial in a human mouth that is physically unable to accommodate them. Thirty five percent of the population do not develop any wisdom teeth at all. Sherlock is a member of that thirty five percent, thus freeing him from all possible complications and problems.

 

Sherlock looks up from the orthodontics journal he’s been reading. Across the room is John, engrossed in the newspaper. As Sherlock watches, John smiles. His teeth are sturdy and straight, with only the faintest cast of yellow to the enamel. He also lacks wisdom teeth and Sherlock wonders if his were removed, or if they’re still impacted in his jaw and buried under the gums or, like Sherlock’s own, they never developed at all. It strikes Sherlock that it’s something he’d like to know and he decides that the next time the doctor goes to work, he’s going to search John’s bedroom to see if there are any x-rays tucked away somewhere. It’s recommended that medical x-rays never be discarded, ever, and John is nothing but meticulous in medical matters.

 

John’s smile broadens. The mandibular incisors and canines are showing. Sherlock is suddenly reminded of a rather small cat that a cousin had owned and carried everywhere. It had loved no one but its owner, and bit and scratched anyone else that came near it. Sherlock could well understand this; up until a certain age he’d scratched and bit anyone who tried to touch him at all. After that he’d learned to tolerate it, though he had hated it and still did. But there are exceptions; Sherlock doesn’t mind when John brushes past him in the kitchen, or crowds next to him in a taxi, or puts his hands in Sherlock’s pockets to fetch his mobile.

 

The smile on John’s face gradually fades as he reads on. Sherlock goes back to the journal.

 

**

 

Some weeks after that, Sherlock decides that he needs data on the coagulation of human saliva after death, and Molly obliges him by giving him the head of a homeless man due for cremation in the lack of any next of kin. When John finds the head in the refrigerator, he storms out and spends the night with Sarah. Sherlock spends the night dissecting the head’s salivary glands and jaw tissue and ligaments. There are only five remaining teeth. The rest have been lost through violence and tooth decay. The muscle is tough and rubbery, but under his thumb the worn stub of a molar is hard and unyielding.

 

**

 

When he next sees Sally Donovan, there is a bite mark just under the collar of her shirt, only visible when she raises her arm. The dental pattern does not match with that of Anderson and going by bite size it’s more likely to belong to a woman than a man. Sherlock wonders idly if Anderson knows that she has had sex with another woman, and if he’d be distressed at her unfaithfulness or titillated that she’s fulfilling the common male heterosexual fantasy of lesbianism. He opens his mouth to ask, but John suddenly steps on Sherlock’s foot, very hard. It would look like an accident to a disinterested observer, but when Sherlock looks at him, his face is scowling and his gaze intense. The tips of his incisors are just visible between his parted lips. He’s noticed the bite mark as well and does not want Sherlock to talk about it. Sherlock blinks and decides to oblige him. It’s a small thing after all, and domestic peace is something Sherlock is beginning to appreciate.

 

**

 

The tooth is often the hardest and most sturdy structure of any vertebrate. Teeth often survive when the rest of the skeleton rots away or is pulverised. Take, for example, the prehistoric shark known as _C. megalodon_. Only a handful of its cartilage vertebrae survive but its fossilised teeth number in the tens of thousands, selling quickly and cheaply to amateur fossil collectors. From a single tooth, a knowledgeable person can give an approximation of the anatomy of the beast. Combining anatomy with the diet inferred by the tooth structure, and the feeding habits of known related species, a fairly decent picture of the animal begins to form.

 

In well known families, an animal can sometimes be named and described on the basis of a single tooth.

 

**

 

The murder of a young girl sparks Sherlock’s interest in human teeth again. The girl has not been raped but she is covered in a massive amount of bite marks, very likely the killer’s own form of sexual penetration as opposed to the conventional kind. Sherlock takes a number of days to solve the case. He’s thrown by the statistically large bite size and the statistically unusual female perpetrator. But the woman is eventually identified and arrested. As she is lead away, her very white teeth flash as she smiles broadly. She has all four wisdom teeth, perfectly formed and positioned. They’re fascinating.

 

Afterwards, back at the flat, John is obviously distressed and trying to hide it. Even Sherlock feels a level of unease over these sorts of murders, although he can never say exactly why this is so. It eventually fades but it’s hard to ignore while it’s there. Sherlock never touches people if he can avoid it, but he knows that other people often welcome it, particularly in times of stress and strong negative emotion. He stares at John. The doctor looks like he can’t decide between crying or destroying something. He seems damaged somehow. A subtle fracture in enamel. He glances up and Sherlock sees that his eyes are reddened and bloodshot. Sherlock wants to do something but he doesn’t know what.

 

John turns and leaves, heading for his bedroom, leaving Sherlock confused and lost, standing in the centre of the living room.

 

 

**

 

Eventually Sherlock gets around to searching John’s room. He finds x-rays of John’s injured shoulder and another set of John’s right foot. It is a number of years old, probably taken when John was in his late teens. It shows a small fracture of the middle toe, likely due to a sporting accident. Painful and inconvenient but by no means damaging in the long term. Sherlock does not find any x-rays of John’s teeth. It’s oddly disappointing. Sherlock puts it out of his mind and turns his attention to other matters.

 

**

 

The shape of an animal’s teeth are determined by the life it leads, and restrict that animal to the diet determined by those teeth. It’s very much a chicken/egg situation. In times of ecological and environmental stability, what’s called a specialist is generally the most successful.

A specialist is a species that has evolved to fill a single ecological nice perfectly. In this niche there are no competitors and the specialist can exploit any resources to the best of its abilities.

In times of unrest, generalisers are the animals that can best cope with the demands of their surroundings. They are a jack of all trades but master of none. While they cannot exploit any given resource nearly as well as a specialist, they are able to access a greater array of these resources.

 

Obligate carnivores are specialisers. Their bodies can digest meat and meat only. Therefore their teeth are accordingly designed for predation; a carnivore’s biggest weapons are its sharp, lethal canines. Obligate herbivores are also specialisers. They can digest plant matter and plant matter only, and their most important teeth are their grinding molars. A generaliser is always an omnivore; able to eat meat or plant matter, whatever is available at the time. Their teeth are a mixture; they have both canines for tearing and rending flesh, and molars for grinding. Omnivores are best at surviving in an uncertain world; they can be impolitely referred to as the animal equivalent of a rubbish bin.

 

It says a lot about the human species that the history written in their teeth is one of exploitation and opportunity.

 

**

 

The second child murder is far simpler than that of the little girl covered in human bite marks; this young boy has been beaten savagely to death. Lighter fluid has been splashed in what remained of his face and set on fire, presumably to prevent any attempts at identification. Sherlock wonders why the assailant even bothered; the bones of the face are essentially pulverised. After that the final indignity came in the form of a miserable attempt at disposing of the pitiful little body, by throwing it in the Thames and hoping that the currents would carry it out to sea.

 

Sherlock is called in; there has been no missing persons report and all attempts to identify this boy have failed. It’s the work of mere observation of minute marks on the flesh to pinpoint the exact estate where the boy comes from. A door to door knock finds the boy’s mother; she is hideously skinny and strung out on heroin, but says that her boy is with his father. She flatly refuses to believe otherwise; her child cannot be dead. Even when the father, also an addict, is contacted and tells her that he thought the boy was with her, she still disbelieves. She keeps on disbelieving when her boyfriend breaks down and confesses that he murdered the child in a drunken jealous haze. She keeps on disbelieving as she sits in a jail cell, arrested for possession, watching as the technician draws the blood from her arm. But even she can’t keep disbelieving when the genetic analysis of her blood matches her genes to the genes of the murdered boy. 

 

The mood in the Yard is volatile and nasty after the boyfriend’s confession. Even Sherlock can feel it in the air. He’s not even tempted to hang around and make a nuisance of himself this time. He grabs his coat and leaves. John is not there to follow him; the doctor is working in a temp capacity at a local surgery. Sherlock believes that it’s just as well, given his mood after seeing the bite marks on the corpse of the little girl.

 

**

 

That evening, as John paces about the kitchen, doing something domestic with food because funds are too low for takeaway, Sherlock sits with his magnifying glass and studies the ridges and marks of an incisor. Each tooth is subtly unique and when it’s placed in the mouth, those unique features combine with the other teeth to form an arrangement that’s as identifiable as a fingerprint.

 

John humours Sherlock by pretending to listen as he rattles on about the intricacies of the case. He’s very careful not to mention the child himself in too great a detail, but focuses in the peripheries, the place where the body was found, the trace evidence on the skin, the dismal estate where the child had lived. John hums in all the correct places. It makes Sherlock feel happy that John is paying attention to him; John is the only person in his life that makes Sherlock feel less alone. He’d never even realised that he was lonely before he met John.

 

“Can you believe,” Sherlock says, “That there was one remaining intact tooth? That’s what they took the DNA from-” he jumps when something heavy slams on the table beside him. He looks up. John is looming less than twenty centimetres away from Sherlock’s face. The doctor’s eyes are focused hard on the incisor in Sherlock’s hand.

 

“If that,” John growls, his breath warm and wet, “Was stolen from that boy’s morgue drawer, so help me Sherlock-”

 

“No, no, no,” Sherlock says quickly, “I’ve had this for a long time. This is a milk tooth, shed naturally, see?”

 

“I see,” John says. He relaxes. The corners of his mouth curl. “Do I want to know how came by that?”

 

“It’s mine.”

 

“I know it’s yours, Sherlock, I’m asking where you got it from.”

 

“It’s mine, like I said. When I lost it, Mummy told me that the tooth fairy would give me money for it, but I wanted it for myself. Just as well,” Sherlock says, “For some reason milk teeth are hard to come by. No one wants to sell them or give them away.”

 

John shakes his head. “It’s understandable. Loose teeth are strangely disturbing.”

 

“I don’t see why,” Sherlock huffs, “Teeth are teeth whether inside the mouth or outside of it.” He waves the little thing under John’s nose. “It’s just a tooth.”

 

“It’s hard to explain why.”

 

“Oh,” says Sherlock witheringly, “It’s one of _those_ things.” He grabs John’s hand and puts the tooth in the centre of his palm. “You keep it.”

 

“Sherlock, I don’t _want_ it.”

 

“Take it any way,” Sherlock snaps, going back to his microscope. “You’ll get used to it.”

 

There’s the sound of an exasperated sigh. John goes back to the kitchen, back to the pots and pans. Sherlock permits himself a small smile. John had walked away still holding Sherlock’s cast tooth. And the idea of John keeping that tooth makes Sherlock feel happy in a way that’s just as unexplainable as John’s dislike of it.

 

**

 

Dentin is a layer of calcified tissue underneath the enamel of the crown and over the cementium at the base of a tooth. It is essential for the support of the enamel, and is yellowish in appearance.

 

When the man who had murdered the boy cried, he covered his eyes to hide his tears. His mouth had gaped open, showing his tongue and molars. The centre of one of them was worn through the hard brittle enamel, showing the softer dentin underneath.

 

Sherlock knows that there’s a simile or a metaphor there, but he’s never cared for things like that.

 

**

 

The next child murder is horrific.

 

All murders are horrific; the murders of children especially so. But this one actually makes Anderson cry, Donovan run off to vomit quietly somewhere, and both John and Lestrade turn their backs, walk very calmly away from the scene and in opposite directions.

 

When they return Sherlock deduces by their bleeding and bruised knuckles, along with their elevated breathing and body heat, that they’ve been attempting to beat up walls. It’s a futile exercise, Sherlock opens his mouth to tell them that, but Lestrade snarls, maxillary and mandibular  incisors, canines, premolars, glistening, wet with saliva. Sherlock is disgusted; he doesn’t want to see Lestrade’s teeth. It’s too unbearably intimate all of a sudden. He jerks his eyes away, fixes them on John.

 

“Your observations, doctor?”

 

And John shudders. He takes a deep breath, and another, and another. He kneels down beside Sherlock, and the elevated heat of his body makes Sherlock lean towards him.

 

This child is another boy.

 

He has been raped. Violently, and over an extended period of time by at least three other males. Not adults either; one, maybe two in their late teens, at least one in his middle teens at the very oldest. Fingermarks around his mouth, lips black and bruised as the assailants used their own hands to muffle his cries. More fingerprints on his wrists.

 

He’d been raped, over and over again, until the physical trauma became so great that he had eventually bled out and died.

 

On his shoulder is a beautifully defined bite mark and the sight of it makes Sherlock’s stomach churn.

 

“Was there something wrong with the Thai, do you think?” Sherlock asks John as they finish their examination and move towards the waiting squad car.

 

“What?”

 

“The Thai we had for lunch, remember?”

 

“I remember it, Sherlock,” John says in that level tone that means he’s holding onto his temper very carefully. “What about it?”

 

“There must have been something wrong with it. I feel quite bilious. Don’t you?”

 

John stops. He turns and stares at Sherlock, who stares back in genuine puzzlement. And then, a sad little smile flicks at the corner of his mouth. “There was nothing wrong with the food, Sherlock. Come on, we have to go.”

 

Sherlock hears Anderson say, “What do you know, freak’s almost human after all.” He almost turns back to ask what was meant by that, but John’s hand is on his elbow, and John’s strange sad smile grows enough to show the smallest flash of teeth, and suddenly Sherlock thinks that he’d follow John anywhere.

 

**

 

By the time everything’s all over and the boy’s body is slipped into the morgue draw, and the boy’s assailants are in custody- one of them is the boy’s own elder half brother-  it’s so late it’s early and John and Sherlock are finally back in their flat. The dawn is pushing through the curtains. John looks utterly exhausted. Sherlock wonders if the man is going to be able to go to work today, but then he remembers that it’s now Sunday and that they can just sit together, all day if they want to, even if neither of them wants to talk.

 

There’s a soft groan as John rolls his shoulder under that dreadful jumper of his, the old scar acting up. “I’m going to make some tea,” he announces, and gets up. The limp is back; the sight of it makes Sherlock jerk to his feet.

 

“John,” he says, “John,” but then he can’t think of what else to say.

 

John raises his eyebrows in enquiry. “What is it, Sherlock?” he asks patiently.

 

Sherlock frowns. “You are…distressed.”

 

“Yes, Sherlock, I am.” Still patient, like Sherlock is the one upset and not him. As though there’s something wrong that Sherlock doesn’t understand. But Sherlock does understand, suddenly; Sherlock is upset because John is upset. And Sherlock doesn’t want John to be upset; he wants him to be happy.

 

Thinking hard, Sherlock tries to remember what to do in these sorts of situations. Physical contact often helps others, he’s found. Sherlock has been pawed by all sorts of people in the line of his work and he’s used the human need for physical contact to his advantage many times. But he’s never wanted to embrace someone for their sake; he’s only ever done it if he’s wanted something off them, data or whatever he can steal from their pockets. There’s a pain in his jaw; Sherlock realises that he’s grinding his teeth.

 

That irritating, bewildering _patience_ on John’s face. It feels like John’s using it like a barrier between he and Sherlock, and Sherlock hates it, wants to tear it down, wants them to stand close together, wants John to stop being distressed and smile instead, that subtle flash of teeth that only appears when John is smiling to himself and at no other time.

 

Sherlock reaches out. He thinks of wrapping his arms around John’s shoulders, but John’s shoulder is sore and Sherlock doesn’t think John would like that. Instead Sherlock finds himself gripping the sides of John’s face, very tight.

 

“Ow! Ow! Sherlock, what are you-”

 

John grabs Sherlock’s hands and pushes them away. Sherlock takes a step back, then another, and then another. He realises that his heart rate is elevated and that there’s the faintest tremor in his hands. These things are completely involuntary; he’s both fascinated and disturbed by them.

 

“Did you have your wisdom teeth surgically removed? Did you ever have them at all?”

 

“Sherlock, what the hell are you going on about?”

 

“John,” says Sherlock deliberately, “I would like…” he trails off, licks his lips. Another involuntary movement.

 

“Yes, Sherlock?” John is no longer patient. He should be angry or annoyed, but instead he looks amused. Amused, like there’s some kind of secret joke that Sherlock’s not in on.

 

“I would like, John, for you to show me your teeth.”

 

Sherlock calculates a ninety eight probability, based on John’s previously stated lack of sexual interest in males and on previous incidents where he’d lost his temper over some bizarre unstated social transgression of Sherlock’s, that John will punch him in the face. So he’s surprised when John smiles, and opens his mouth, and opens it wide. Surprised, but so completely and utterly thrilled.

 

The lining of John’s mouth, the soft bed of his tongue, the palate, how slick and wet it looked and John’s teeth, oh god, John’s _teeth_. Sherlock vaguely hears himself make this strange whimpering sound but that doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is what’s inside of John’s mouth. Sherlock lunges forward, and his momentum pushes John back down onto the lounge. There’s a frantic scramble of limbs, there’s not enough room for the two of them and John grabs Sherlock’s arms and flips him over onto his back and onto the floor. John lands with his knees planted firmly astride Sherlock’s hips; Sherlock is not going anywhere, but that doesn’t matter because the only thing that Sherlock wants is to touch the insides of John’s mouth. When Sherlock’s hands are seized and held firmly above his head he wants to scream, wants to shake free and trace the sharp edge of John’s canines. But he can’t, because he’s well and truly pinned and John is hovering over him.

 

“I thought so,” John says smugly, grinning infuriatingly, frustratingly, _gorgeously._

 

“Let me go! Please, John…”

 

“Did you just say please? The great Sherlock Holmes, saying please? Please for what? What is that you want?”

 

John leans closer. Very deliberately, he blows very gently across Sherlock’s forehead. “Is this what you want?”

 

“John,” Sherlock whines. He tries to rock up on his heels, get some leverage to flick his hips and throw John off of him, but all that does is make him realise just how achingly hard he is.

 

“This?” The lightest, most tender of kisses against each of Sherlock’s eyelids, and he stops still, not even daring to breath. “Or…this?”His hot, wet mouth is pressed against Sherlock’s jaw, and then, John carefully, but firmly, bites down.

 

Oh, this is wonderful. Glorious. Something Sherlock hadn’t realised he wanted until John offers it to him. He doesn’t even struggle when John takes both of his wrists in one hand and pins them to the floor. The buttons of his shirt are flicked open one by one. It’s the most pleasurable torture ever conceived as John mouths at the juncture of neck and shoulder, licking, kissing. But it’s not enough. Not nearly enough and Sherlock wants to scream in frustration as John just keeps nuzzling. He slams the back of his head against the ground, tries to arch his back and force his flesh into the harder contact he wants so badly.

 

“Calm down, will you? You’re going to hurt yourself if you’re not careful.”

 

“I’ll hurt _you_ if you don’t stop fucking around and do it properly!”

 

John draws away. “But I am fucking around, Sherlock. That’s the whole point of this. Fucking. You know. What we’re doing now.” He grins, and the sight of all those teeth makes Sherlock jerk his hips up. John shudders. Experimentally, Sherlock does it again, but slower, harder. The effect it has on John is fascinating. His eyes close, his face flushes and mouth opens, a lovely flash of incisors behind his lips. He breathes out roughly, and opens his eyes. “Fuck you, Sherlock,” and it doesn’t sound like an insult at all; it sounds filthy and sexy and it’s a promise of everything that John’s going to do to him, and Sherlock shuts his eyes and waits.

 

Air blows down the side of his face, along his throat and onto the wetness that John’s kiss had left behind. Sherlock squirms as it intensifies, feels the warmth of John’s breath and suddenly, teeth latch on, hard.

 

John lets his hands go and he scrabbles at the floor with his fingernails. Freeing himself is the very last thing on his mind as John bites harder and harder, until the pleasure bleeds into pain and it’s fucking glorious. A bite to his shoulder, a bite to his flank, a bite to his sternum; John’s teeth digging into his skin over and over and over and each bite is different, soft or hard or wet, nip of incisors and the sharp pain of canines when John turns his head to the side. As many teeth as possible all at the same time as John gapes his jaws as open as he can. When that mouth draws away, Sherlock opens his eyes and thinks of murder, and not in the good way.

 

“John, why did you stop? John?”

 

John is breathing roughly and he’s scrabbling at the button on top of his fly. His fingers are shaking too hard to be of any use, and Sherlock bats them away, flicks the button open and yanks the zip open. The flush on John’s face is the second best thing that Sherlock’s seen yet. When Sherlock slides his hand into John’s fly the other man jerks and moans like something out of a bad pornographic film, but his is real and not an act. A gentle squeeze makes him jerk and convulse, and Sherlock flips John over on his back. He grabs the waistband and jerks it down. John yelps.

 

“Jesus, Sherlock, try to be a bit more careful than that.”

 

Sherlock thinks that John is talking too much. He moves up the older man’s body. He’s surprised when John grabs him by the ears and kisses him. Kisses are a part of the whole process, Sherlock knows that, but he’s never seen the point of kissing on the mouth, and to be honest he still doesn’t. So he kisses back, tries to do it well enough to make John happy and he thinks it works okay. He also thinks that the ridiculous jumper needs to go, but he can see a use for that. Keeping John distracted with the kiss he slides his hands along John’s flanks and under the jumper. He yanks the jumper up and over the man’s head. John obligingly raises his arms and that’s how Sherlock gets him. Before John realises what’s happened, Sherlock has tangled the material into a very rough knot, trapping his hands. It wouldn’t take much for John to free himself, but that’s not the way the game works, and John knows it. So he lays back and waits for Sherlock.

 

And finally, _finally_ , Sherlock gets what he wants: his fingers in John’s mouth.

 

Molars, premolars, canines, incisors, fuck, it’s glorious, hard teeth buried in slick, wet softness and it’s the most incredible thing. Each ridge a fingerprint, each notch unique and belonging only to John. When John very gently begins to chew Sherlock’s hips snap forward and he almost collapses. Scraping his nails down John’s torso makes John tense, jaw stiff with restraint, sharp, shallow motions like he wants nothing more than to bite down, very hard. Sherlock would like him to do exactly that. So very carefully, Sherlock reaches down and frees John’s penis. A rough stroke makes John arch his head back but for some reason makes him open his jaws wider at the same time, and that’s exactly the opposite of what Sherlock wants. Sherlock hooks his fingers over John’s lower incisors and holds them there, and slides down John’s body. With his free hand he pulls it into his mouth, as far in as he can manage it, and sucks as hard as he can.

 

That’s it; that’s perfect, John wails and bites down on Sherlock’s fingers and keeps biting harder and harder as he comes in Sherlock’s mouth, and Sherlock’s fingers are grinding between John’s teeth and it’s the best fucking thing in the world. John shudders a final time and slides out of Sherlock’s mouth, and doesn’t so much as twitch when Sherlock steals the handkerchief out of his pocket to spit into. He does sigh and keep gently manipulating Sherlock’s fingers between his teeth as Sherlock pushes his own penis against John’s stomach and rocks and rocks.

 

By this stage Sherlock’s own orgasm is unimportant- he’s already got what he wanted- but he knows that if he doesn’t John will only feel upset all over again. As incomprehensible as Sherlock finds most human emotions, even he understands that to someone like John, sex means mutual pleasure. And now isn’t really the time to explain why an orgasm isn’t strictly necessary for Sherlock right now. It is pleasant, though, to drape his limbs over John and just feel the heat of John’s body all over, and throughout John keeps gently working his teeth around Sherlock’s fingers. And while Sherlock’s orgasm isn’t necessary it’s still nice when it happens.

 

He reaches for the handkerchief he’d spat into before and cleans the worst of it up. John works his arms out of the jumper and Sherlock uses that to wipe John’s saliva from his hand. He makes a token effort to get up and is immensely gratified when John pulls him firmly back into a lovely cuddle.

 

“Well,” John says thoughtfully, “At least it isn’t feet. That’s something, at least.”

 

“Cementum,” mutters Sherlock, rubbing the side of his face against John’s chest.”

 

“Cementum?”

 

“It’s the bone-like substance covering the root of a tooth.”

 

“I know what it is, Sherlock, I just-” He breaks off with a sign. “Never mind. Carry on.”

 

“There’s the enamel, then the dentin. At the base there’s the cementum. And in the middle of this is the pulp. The soft, sensitive, connective tissue. The so-called nerve, if you want to be vulgar.”

 

“Haven’t we already been vulgar enough today?”

 

“Never,” says Sherlock, a little smugly, “There’s no such thing as too vulgar.” He reaches up to touch John’s mouth. John obligingly opens, letting Sherlock’s thumb slip inside. “I suppose it does bother me, a little. When it’s children.”

 

John presses a gentle kiss against Sherlock’s fingertip. “I’m very happy to hear that, Sherlock, but this really isn’t the best time for discussions on the subject of murder and _if you don’t shut up about it right now_ I swear that I’ll _gag_ you.”

 

“Fine,” Sherlock says. He pushes his thumb back into John’s mouth, and arranges his limbs so that John can’t leave without a struggle. In his head, Sherlock names and counts all the teeth in the human jaw and mandible, and the different tissues that make up their structure. He realises that he still doesn’t know what happened to John’s wisdom teeth, but he decides that it’s something that can wait until later.

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to everyone that's read, bookmarked, commented and left kudos on this fic. I've never had this amount of interest in a single one off fic before, and I'm very flattered that this has received so much attention. Ta!


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